08 May Tips for a More Consistent Prayer Life

It’s so important to be faithful in your time with the Lord and to be consistent with your prayer time because, if you don’t it will extend past just your own attitude and day.

There’s a quote that says, “If you miss one day with the Lord, He notices. If you miss two days with the Lord, you notice. If you miss three days with the Lord, other people start to notice.” So, be consistent to not let such an important part of your day fall through the cracks.

If you want some ways on just starting a prayer life, I’m going to give you some tips on how to start AND how you can stay consistent with your time with the Lord. We’re going to end with talking about what spending time with the Lord every day is actually going to do for you.

Don’t have time to read this post? Listen to the audio here:

Start small.

Don’t get overwhelmed and make prayer too complicated, it’s okay to start small. Maybe five minutes a day is what you need to start with.

And you know what? God is going to see your heart, He is going to see that you desire to spend time with him.

God’s not making you punch a clock. If you say, “Okay Lord, I’m going to commit to five minutes a day with You every morning,” and you show up and you’re committed to that time, the Lord will bless you.

God’s Word says whoever is faithful with little is going to be faithful with much (Luke 16:10) and He sees your heart and He’s proud of you for being intentional about that time even if it’s small at first.

You wouldn’t run a marathon on the first day you start running, right? So, the same is true with prayer. God doesn’t expect you to start praying five hours every day, He just wants to spend time with you.

So, find a time and a place to pray and just start.

Stick with a plan.

Have a devotional ready. It doesn’t have to be a Bible study that takes 45 minutes to an hour every day.

Whenever you first start, don’t push yourself to do a huge chunk of time.

Start with a small devotional. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young is definitely a great short devotional that you can read it, spend time in prayer and definitely reap the benefits of your time with the Lord.

Just start. Sometimes we get overwhelmed and we try to make it too complicated but forget all the complicated stuff and just start. Then, you’re going to see results.

Stay Consistent

Once you’ve found a time and a place to pray, even if it’s that five minutes, be consistent. We just touched on Luke 16:10, it says, “Whoever’s faithful with little will also be faithful with much.”

If you have been listening to the podcast or reading the blog for very long you’d know that’s my verse for this year and being faithful doesn’t just apply to money but it applies to our time, our efforts, our prayer lives so, start small, stay consistent and you’re going to see changes in your prayer life.

Now, if you find yourself kind of slipping in this area and you’re not being as consistent then, let me recommend that you scale back the time that you’re spending.

It’s better to find an amount of time that you commit to and that you can be consistent in and then build from there.

If you spend an hour in prayer that is amazing but, if you spend an hour in prayer once a month I guarantee you that God would rather have you for five minutes a day for a month than one huge long prayer time once every 30 days.

God wants to be with you, He wants to spend time with you day after day. He wants to be part of every day of your life so, if you feel like you’re slipping, just scale back a little bit and give yourself some grace and find a time that you can commit to and then build on from there.

Pray God’s Word

The best way to have more power in your prayers is to pray God’s Word.

Find promises in His Word and then begin to pray them back to Him.

One of the resources you can use is, Praying God’s Word by Beth Moore. It’s a great tool and I also wanted to give you a couple of verses to start with.

Think of Psalms 51:1, it says, “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.” So whenever you are maybe at a stage where you need to repent about something or, you’re struggling with something in your life, you can pray that prayer out.

Whenever you pray the Word of God back to Him, there’s more power in your prayers.

Another verse that you commit to memory is, 2 Kings 17:9 it says, “You will fear the Lord your God and he will deliver you out of the hands of your enemies.” So, if you’re in a really difficult situation and you just feel like stuff is coming at you, that’s a verse that you can pray and you say, “Lord, I’m putting my trust in you and I know that You will deliver me from this situation.”

Even if you just Google “encouraging verses” or “verses about faith” or “verses about victory”, you’ll find all kinds of great results.

Google is a strong tool so, just be diligent about finding verses that speak to your heart and speak to the place that you’re at in your relationship with the Lord right now.

Write it Down

Another way to stay consistent in your prayer time is to keep track of your prayers so:

have a notebook in the place where you pray

use the notes app on your phone

make lists of people that you want to pray for

write down situations that you’re concerned about

note verses that you want to pray

I love to make my life digital: my calendar is on my computer and on my phone. My Bible studies are on my iPad but, writing out my prayers is something that I still keep to pen and paper.

If that’s not how you are, definitely do you, do what works for you but, it helps me by having a notebook where I:

Write out prayers

Sort out struggles

Brainstorm what God is wanting me to do

So, if I feel like my business is taking a different direction or, if I really need to seek Him in regards to His will, I can go back in a few weeks or months and see how God answered those prayers.

I can see how dumb I am whenever I’m praying out certain things and I can say, “Wow, I was really selfish in that prayer, no wonder He didn’t answer that prayer.”

Or I can see how he moved in my heart through day after day of praying the same thing.

There was a time quite a few years back, when I was really bitter against a person in my life and, at the time, they gave me a gift card.

It was just a small amount, it wasn’t a big deal but, I decided to purchase a hand soap with it.

To be honest I thought about throwing the gift card away. When I prayed about it and I decided that every time I would use the soap, I would pray for this person.

I made it a point to pray over the soap and so every single day I would take the time, while washing my hands, to pray for this person.

When I look back at my prayer journal, I realize that God was changing my heart day after day and that’s not something that I would have noticed if I hadn’t been writing it down.

So, write things down so you can check back weeks, months, and even years later and see how God answered prayers, see how God changed you, and see how God worked in your life because you’re keeping track of the things that you’re praying.

Seeing His faithfulness is definitely one way to stay consistent in your time with the Lord.

Get connected.

Another great way to have a powerful prayer life is to get connected. You don’t have to pray alone, and there’s power in numbers. The Bible says in Matthew 18:20, “Where two or more gathered in my name, there I am with them.”

Your prayer life is strengthened whenever you spend time with other people who are working to build their prayer lives, too.

I have a friend who gets together with a group of ladies to have a Bible study.

Maybe, every morning or once a week, you might have a small group that you meet with at your church or a life group.

However you choose to get connected, just know that your prayer life is strengthened whenever you spend time with other people. There’s power whenever you start praying for someone and there’s a confidence you walk in knowing that someone is praying for you.

I just read through Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson. I went through it with a leadership team that I’m on and one of the things that really stuck out at me was he said, “If you start praying, you need someone praying for you.”

The reason is because whenever you start praying the enemy sees that and you’re definitely going to see some struggles, so you definitely need someone who is praying over your life.

What’s in it for me…

Sometimes it can feel like your time with the Lord is just something on your to do list.

Whether you’ve been a Christian for a long time, or you’re brand new and feeling really overwhelmed, I want you to know that our time with the Lord does something for us.

First off, spending time with the Lord gives you peace. Whenever you’re struggling with something, if you’ve had a conflict of sorts with someone, spending time with the Lord really gives you peace. It gives you a peace that the world can’t explain. If you are troubled in your heart, go to the Lord, you will find peace there, you will find rest there.

Spending time with the Lord is going to give you time. It’s like the tithe principle, if you give 10% of your income to the Lord that’s the first fruits of what He’s given you. So, its giving it back to the Lord. The same is true, I believe, with our time. So, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give 10% but if you give the first part of your day to the Lord, you will find that time shows up later in your life. I don’t know how it works, it’s just the Lord but, things just happen to make your day go smoother.

Spending time with the Lord is going to give you inspiration. You start to walk with confidence and you start to see the world through the eyes of Jesus and you start living with this excitement of what God’s going to show you and what He’s going to teach you that day.

So, spending time with the Lord doesn’t have to be just something boring that’s on your to do list or reading a particular one chapter everyday.

It can (and should) be an exciting time because we know that our relationship with the Lord is the most exciting relationship that we have.

And as we spend time with Him, its like any other friendship.

If you spend time with them once in a while, you might just scratch the surface of getting to know each other.

But whenever you spend day after day with them, you start to really dig deep and really start to find out who they are inside, and as that time goes on and as you get more comfortable spending time with this person it doesn’t feel like a chore, it feels like a joy. And it can be the same way with your time with the Lord.

So approach your prayer time knowing that you’re investing in a relationship that is going to change your life. The truth is that it’s not just going to change your life but it’s going to change your day.

I hope that using some of these tools will help you. I would love to hear what you do to be more consistent in your time with the Lord so head over to the Girl of Grace Facebook Group and share it with me there!

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Hey there! I’m Ashley

Believer. Wife. Mom. Educator. Speaker. I provide biblical resources for purpose-driven motherhood so you can be the confident mom you were called to be!